by Gabby Grant
Tom stopped suddenly at the firm grip on his shoulder and realized he’d been shaking the woman- hard.
“Sir,” DIPAC counsel John James said at his back. “We’ve tried hardball and it hasn’t worked.”
Tom spun in confusion toward the man behind him. He recognized the face, but...
“Sir,” James continued solemnly, “I realize you are close to the family, but I’m afraid you’re being in here constitutes a breech of protocol. It’s going to be someone’s ass for letting you in. And, if you’ll pardon my frankness, it’ll be mine too if I don’t see you out of here, post haste.”
Tom whirled back toward Maria, trying to remember just what she’d told him. She’d confessed, hadn’t she? Confessed to the conspiracy involving Cuba? Whatever it was Tom knew with dead certainty, Maria and therefore the Cubans, were involved in the analyst scare. Christ, he’d known that all along. That’s why his being a part of this operation was so damn critical. Critical and top secret, he reminded himself, casting a wary eye back at John James. Even the lawyers... No, make that, especially the lawyers- couldn’t be trusted.
What Tom needed to do was get back to the office and make sure everything was on track. His operation’s success was more critical now than ever. Thank God he wasn’t operating alone. This thing was too damn big. Make that, fricking explosive, for one man to handle alone. But when it was over, one man and one man only would reap the glory. Yessireebob, Tom Mooney would get his accolades for sure.
CHAPTER 24
Joe approached Al Fahd at the outdoor desert shooting range. Loaded military cargo trucks lumbered by, their burgeoning flaps fluttering in the slight breeze. Sweat trickled down Joe’s brow as he walked to face his destiny, the barrel of a pistol pressed into his back.
Al Fahd waited until Joe was little more than four feet away, then spun in his tracks, angling his weapon high and setting the sights from his semiautomatic just between McFadden’s eyes.
“You, Mr. Smith,” the Arab said, a gritty unlit cigar between his purple lips, “are either very brave or very stupid.”
Joe started to shrug, but the pistol at his back pressed deeper.
“Moving out?” Joe asked, raising his voice above the din of the convoy that continued to grind past.
Al Fahd twirled his lifeless cigar in his teeth but kept the aim of his rifle steady. “Ever the curious one, aren’t we, Mr. Smith? Or should we say...McFadden?”
Joe swallowed hard, but forced a rock-hard smile. “Very good, Al Hakeem. Perhaps they could use you in US Intelligence.”
Al Fahd shifted into his rifle with a disengaging click. “Better me than you, special agent McFadden. You appear to have outlived your usefulness.”
Joe held up his hands and started to shake his head, but the barrel at his back dug in. “Surely, you didn’t bring me all the way back to kill me,” Joe said with a grimace.
Al Fahd lowered his rifle with a riotous laugh, then turned and said something to the two men beside him who’d been oiling their weapons. The others shared a look then gave McFadden a slow appraisal, which stirred forth their own hilarity.
“Someone going to let me in on the joke?” Joe asked, not entirely sure he wanted to know.
“I said,” Al Fahd told him, his eyes going deadly cold, “that’s what you’ll wish- that we’ve only brought you here to kill you. For you see, Mr. Smith...uh, McFadden, we have our ways of making you talk.”
Joe tightened his jaw but said nothing.
“Take your right hand for example,” Al Fahd began, until his words were drowned out by rude guffaws from the men around him.
Joe curled the fingers of his right hand into a ball. “I wouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
Al Fahd gave a grisly smile, then shook his head at McFadden’s bluster. “We start with one finger...” He slurped saliva between the cigar and his teeth, in a fair imitation of a slicing sound. “Then the next...”
Joe started to move, then looked over his shoulder and changed his mind. “You know, Al Hakeem, you’ve got me pegged all wrong. I could still be of use to you.”
Al Fahd trained his weapon sights down to Joe’s groin, before angling them slowly, slowly back up again to Joe’s forehead. “In what way?”
Joe met Al Fahd’s cold black stare. “Tell me what you’re moving in those trucks.”
Al Fahd spewed a laugh, spittle seeping toward the parched earth. “Those, Mr. McFadden, are heading to America, a land I’m afraid, to which you’ve already said your goodbyes.”
Joe swallowed hard, remembering the helium tanks, knowing what day it was, recalling Al Fahd’s intention to party. Y2K, hell no. It was the turn of this new year the Arab was after. This new year, all dammit to hell, in America.
“Auld Lang Syne?” Joe asked.
Al Fahd steadied his weapon and began a slow, tortuous, ill-melodious tune between his teeth and the cigar.
“You’ll never get away with it.”
Al Fahd fell silent and took a step nearer, closing the gap between his rifle barrel and Joe McFadden’s head. “No?” he asked, his ebony gaze blistering like blue-hot coals. “Perhaps you should tell me why.”
***
Mark sat across from Ana at the DOS conference table, an unsettling deja vu casting a pall on the room. Almost four years ago, they’d been in a similar situation. But, though he’d known her less well, she’d seemed more forthcoming in Spain. Mark thumped his gold pen against his notepad, wondering if she was holding something back. Hoping in his heart it wasn’t something he didn’t want to know.
“You sure you don’t want someone else in the room?”
“Why,” she asked, motioning to the camera dangling from a suspense bracket in the corner, “can’t you be trusted?”
Oh, Mark could be trusted alright- infinitely. So what was up with the double talk from his generally straight-forward wife? “I don’t know how to tell you-”
Ana leaned her weary form forward and turned both palms up on the table. “Since when have you been at a loss for words?”
“Okay, I’ll come straight out with it, then. I don’t think you’re being completely honest with me.”
Ana set her jaw and pushed back from the table. “As an analyst or a husband?”
Mark swallowed hard. “Both.”
Ana shook her head with a look of incredulity. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say after everything I’ve told you? I was almost killed, for God’s sake! Hay Long was a monster and yet I found a way to come out on top!”
Mark pushed back in his own chair and stood. “Ana, hang on...” he said, walking around the table.
“No, you hang on! What is it with you men...”
Ah, shit. Mark caught the plural, his stomach nosediving.
“...always telling me what to do!”
“You have a right to be upset,” Mark told her. “I wasn’t for a minute implying-”
“Forget what you were implying! It was all in what you didn’t say!”
Mark cast his eye toward the camera, then turned his back on it, stepping in toward the table. “I’d keep your voice to a low roar, if I were you. That is, unless you want our domestic dirty laundry made part of the permanent DOS record.”
Ana sprung to her feet. “This has nothing to do with our troubles at home,” she said, stepping in front of him so she was out of the camera’s view.
Mark raised his eyebrows. “So, you admit there are troubles at home?”
“My admitting it is not the news flash here. But that’s neither here nor there. We’re talking about my recent abduction; the fact that you didn’t once think to pat me on the back for--”
“You wanted me to pat you on the back?” Mark asked, dumbfounded. It had been all that Mark could do to keep Ana unaware of the fact that she’d not just disabled Hay Long, she’d flat out killed him.
“You’re hopeless,” Ana said, looking like she meant it.
“I am proud of you, proud of the way you handled yourself
in the motel. Never said that I wasn’t!”
“Never said that you were. Just sat there like some Goddamned bureaucrat, taking notes.”
“It’s my job to take notes,” Mark said, his voice rising more than he would have liked. “And you damn well know that. What’s this really all about, Ana?” Mark asked, trying to see into her through her deep, black eyes. But even her pupils were obscured by the shadows of the room.
“I’ve told you,” she said, turning away, “all you need to know.”
“Hey,” he said, taking her by the shoulders and spinning her back toward him. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about! Is this about McFadden? Is that why you won’t come clean?”
Ana hardened her expression and looked away.
Mark felt like the last sailor on the Titanic before it went down. He slackened his grip but didn’t let go. “Tell me it’s not what I’m thinking. That you and McFadden--” Mark felt hot bile rise in his throat. Ana and that CIA bastard all twisted up in the sheets. He should have killed him when he had the chance.
“Not that,” she said, reeled back in back his eyes.
“Well, I did find you in his shirt- and not much else.”
“I know it looked bad.”
“You have a talent for understatement.”
“And you have a talent for losing control! You should have seen yourself. You would have killed him if-”
“Now you’re being melodramatic.”
“Now you’re being patronizing!
Mark let out a steady breath. There was a day when nobody would have beaten him at this game, a whole platoon of staff sergeants couldn’t have gotten under his skin. What was happening to him?
He was scared shitless he was losing his marriage, that’s what.
Ana huffed and raised one eyebrow. “Are we talking here or getting back into a fight?”
Mark licked his lips. “I’m up for talking,” he said, his voice growing froggy. Because, more than anything, Mark didn’t want to fight. He wanted to take the woman who was standing before him in his arms and make her believe that nothing between them was lost. But first, Mark had to find a way to convince himself. Only yesterday, he would have sold his soul to the devil for another opportunity to hold Ana close. But now, every time Mark shut his eyes, all he could see was Ana swooning against that smirking bad-assed cowboy. It rankled him and tore him apart to think that Ana, his Ana, might have given herself away to someone as undeserving as fricking Joe McFadden. But still, Mark needed to know or they’d never move beyond this. Would never stand a chance.
Ana wiped the corner of her eye but said nothing.
“I mean it,” Mark said, “whatever you’ve got to tell me, Ana. The truth, no matter how it hurts.”
“I don’t want to...hurt you,” she said, her voice cracking.
“I’m a big boy.” Mark forced an unsteady smile, fearing that maybe he wasn’t quite big enough to take whatever she had to tell him. “Though maybe I haven’t been acting like one lately.”
“We’ve both made mistakes.”
Mark prayed to God the mistake she was talking didn’t stand about six feet tall with red-brown hair.
Ana squeezed shut both eyes and tears trickled through long, black lashes. “Joe’s in real trouble, isn’t he?”
Mark massaged her upper arms with his palms. “McFadden’s going to be alright. He’s a tough SOB. Tough as they come.”
Ana nodded through her soft sobs, then opened her eyes.
“How about us?”
Mark slipped his arms around her, damning the camera at his back. Wishing there were somewhere, anywhere they could be alone.
“We,” he said, dipping his head toward hers, “you and I, Ana, are even tougher than any old SOB.” And he meant it. Despite Joe’s long-term hold on the woman he loved, Mark had won Ana over years ago. And he didn’t intend to let her go now. No matter what had happened in that cabin.
Ana attempted a smile, but her trembling lower lip gave way until Mark bent forward and steadied it with a kiss. But when his mouth met hers, Mark wondered silently if Ana was wishing she could feel the bristle of asshole McFadden’s moustache against the soft cushion of her lips.
Mark pulled back, cursing himself for the notion. Why couldn’t he leave well enough alone? Why did he have to prod and press, pushing Ana toward a confession he was nowhere ready to hear? He had her here, didn’t he? And the way she looked up and into him made him believe there was nowhere else she’d rather be. They were a family, the three of them. And, McFadden be damned, Mark was going to move heaven and earth to keep it that way.
“You and me, Ana,” Mark said, holding her in his arms and damning what the DOS saw on that ridiculous camera, “nothing else matters...except for Isabel.”
Ana sniffed and pressed her lips together. “Joe did tell me something. Something about Al Fahd,” she whispered. “But, I thought if I told you... If I gave you all the information, you’d send me packing to the new safe house with Carolyn and Isabel. That I’d never get the chance to-”
Mark felt the relief welling within him like a burst of springtime rain. That was it? Ana wanted in the game? All the secrecy and duplicity were about Ana wanting to contribute to the operation? This wasn’t about her hitting the hay with that smirking red-assed cowboy, after all?
Mark swooped in for a kiss with surprising finesse, thrilled to find Ana heavy in his arms as if all power had been swept from her knees.
“What was all that about?” Ana asked pushing back and gasping for breath.
“That’s about how much I love you,” Mark said. “How I’m so damn crazy about you, that- when I thought I was losing you, Ana- I couldn’t see straight... How I’m never going to let you doubt my feelings again.”
“You tell me what McFadden told you. All of it, word for word. If we can add some new intelligence to what the DOS has already pieced together here, we stand a fighting chance of getting Al Fahd. Hay Long and his sorry friends, too. ”
“We, as in you and me?” Ana asked, as his lips closed in over hers.
Mark nodded and pulled her tight, cradling her head in his hands, threading his fingers in her sweet silky hair. Hair he’d been so worried, dead afraid, he’d never be able to see, touch or smell again. Mark felt his sensations ignite and his blood pulsating to a boil.
This was his Ana, the woman he’d longed for and awaited a lifetime. And no goddamned simple excuse for another man was ever going to take her away. Mark would make certain.
“Mark,” Ana said, shaken, as he broke the seal of their lips. Shaken, yes, Mark thought with an easy confidence that raced to his loins. Shaken in the way Ana liked to be shaken: shaken- and stirred. “There’s a camera at your back.”
Mark felt his blood run cold, as an unwanted film reel fast-forwarded through his brain. The pictures it painted of one amorous CIA operative Joe McFadden and his wife sent a dry-ice fire coursing through his veins. Ana couldn’t have done a better job of dousing the moment, if she’d poured a champagne bucket down his back. Stinking cameras. The all-too-patent reminder that, in this world, one was always watched. Which only made Mark burn at the thought his wife and one horny CIA bastard had been holed up alone in the wilderness for two days- with no one to observe them, or keep them honest. Was Ana even being honest with him now? Or had prolonged exposure to the “business” enabled Ana to carry off her indiscretions just as cavalierly as any operator executing her mission?
“Worried about the film getting back to McFadden at eleven?” Mark snapped, an undisguised chill clinging to every word.
Ana broke free of his arms, stunned. “That was a low blow! I thought we were done with discussing Joe.”
“Even the mention of his name upsets you, doesn’t it?” he asked, scrutinizing the heat in her face.
“No, Mark, you upset me. Just when I think there is hope for us, believe we are getting on track, you go and do a jackass thing like that.”
“Well maybe, if you had nothing to hi
de, you wouldn’t be so hellfire defensive--”
“Hell?” Ana cut in. “You’re the one living in hell, Mark. Some sort of inferno you’ve invented in you’re own mind!”
But Mark was far too much of an analyst to believe it. No matter what Ana said, Mark couldn’t ignore his gut instinct, that needling inner voice that told him Joe McFadden alone with his wife in a cabin spelled trouble.
“Well then, tell me, Ana. Look at me. Look me in the eye and swear you didn’t do it. That, the whole time you were out there wearing nothing but his shirt, there was no sexual contact between you and McFadden.”
Ana’s eyes shot daggers. “I’ll be damned if I'll stoop to your level. The jealous husband, for God’s sake! Whatever happened to the man I married?!”
“He married you,” Mark returned, with a callous edge.
Ana pursed her lips and damned her streaming tears.
“Yeah well, screw the camera!” Ana shouted, pointing over Mark’s shoulder. “And screw you, too! ’Cause that’s all it’s ever about, isn’t it? Your game, by your rules- and rest of us be damned for not living up to your expectations!”
“I think,” Mark said, fighting to steady the tremble in his voice, “you’re getting a bit out of control...”
Ana gave a disgusted snort. “You’re so bad off, you don’t even know when you’re doing it any more! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! If it hadn’t been for Isabel, you’d have smashed poor Joe to hell and back!”
“No Ana,” Mark said, a forced tranquility in his voice. “I’m saving that for next time.”
“Fine, be a maniac,” Ana said, backing toward the door and motioning toward the camera. “It’s all a matter of DOS record now, anyway.”
Mark cursed and glanced at the camera. It was true. The two of them had provided the boys in security with a regular three-ringed performance. Mark removed his suit jacket, sick and tired of making a goddamned spectacle of himself. He strode to the corner and tossed his suit coat up and over the camera lens.
“Now,” he said, leveling a look at his wife, as he rolled up first one shirt sleeve and then the other.
